To Live Again
by Siluial
Summary: Spike lived through everything, you know? Only, this time, the tiger-striped cat couldn't come back. Or maybe...he just needed a little help. (Complete)
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop or any of the characters from aforementioned title. No profit has or will be made on this story. I'm only in it for the fun.

A/N: Well, I'm back, and attempting to write things down as they come to me in one sitting, so I don't loose interest halfway through. Hopefully the debut of this little piece marks the re-emergence of me to the writing world.

If you haven't seen the Cowboy Bebop movie, Knockin' on Heaven's Door or the last episode of the show, then you may not get the ending or the references in italics. I'll include a short explanation about it at the end of the fic.

Enjoy, and thank you for reading!

---

To Live Again

By Siluial

_"There once was a tiger striped cat. This cat lived a million lives and died a million deaths, then revived and kept on living."_

The tiger striped cat had finally run out of lives.

---

Blood. So much fucking blood. So much, in fact, that Faye turned away and vomited, emptying all in her stomach, and then some. She knelt, bent sharply at the midsection, heaving for so long that her lungs burned and ached and hot tears stung at the corners of her eyes. As soon as she finished, she wiped her mouth furiously and turned back to Jet. He didn't look at her, but squeezed her fingers tightly when she slid her hand into his.

_"I'm not going there to die..."_

The blood stood out sharply against the pale tiles.

_"I'm going to find out if I'm really alive..."_

How could someone be alive after that? So much blood. All she could see was red.

---

If someone was dead, why was there so much noise?

A steady _beep-beep-beep_-ing hummed in the background, strangely hypnotic, accompanied by a zigzagging green line that moved up and down in sharp turns. Liquid _drip-drip_-ed from a clear bag into a tiny tube that was connected to his body through a needle. A faint _whoosh_ signified the collapsing and expanding of an accordion-like tube within a plastic cylinder.

Studying it, Faye found it so strange that a machine so simple as a rising and falling tube could keep someone breathing. It seemed like it could break by merely being bumped, effectively cutting off the air supply to the poor sap it was attached to, making the dancing green line flatten and run, unbroken and straight, across the screen.

Eventually, her green eyes fell to the bed, glancing over the lax and unmoving features of his dark face, to the one arm that lay limply above the stark white hospital linens, the fingers loosely curled in towards the palm.

Drawing a deep breath, she marched over to the window, drawing the curtains back fully and throwing open the window. The air that blew into the room stank of pollution and sweat and filth, but anything was better than the still odor of death that had accumulated in the room during her absence.

Moving back to the bed, she perched in the chair beside it, smoothing the blankets nearest to her. Her eyes locked onto his curled fingers.

_"He's probably not coming back. They may have killed him already..."_

Sighing, she leaned back, allowing her eyes to move upwards across the heavily bandaged torso that peeked from the top of the blanket to the face that was turned slightly towards her, apparently sleeping. "Well," she began, licking her lips, "I've got a bit of bad news for you, pal." She leaned forward again, propping her elbow on one knee and cradling her chin in her upturned palm. "Seems there's a limit on how long you can stay in a fancy room all to yourself. They've got other veggies to move onto." Her lips quirked into a faint semblance of a smile. "Word is 'round here that if you don't show an signs of waking within the next 24 hours, they're pulling the plug on you, Spike my boy." She cocked her head, as if listening before speaking again. "Yeah, I know. Rough, isn't it? Not everybody gets frozen for half a century till something can be done for them. Reserved for the special kids like me, you know?"

Her free hand was rooting though the pockets of the jacket hung on the back of the chair. Moments later, a cigarette was popped into her mouth, and a lighter lit and held just off the end. She ignored the "No Smoking Please" sign and moved the flame closer. Nicotine laden smoke suddenly burst into her lungs, and she blew rings with it when she exhaled.

One after the other she smoked, waiting until a pile of cigarette butts had accumulated before taking them all and dumping them out the window. She was looking for another to light when the door bumped open and a nurse entered. Faye immediately dropped the cigs back into the coat pocket, pulling out a crumpled tissue instead and making an act of dabbing her eyes.

The nurse smiled sympathetically as she went about checking the machines and medication, her face growing dimmer with the more time she spent in the room. Faye could almost read the girl's mind: _"No hope for this one. Pretty soon he'll be getting his own min-fridge in the basement with all the other stiffs." _Which was funny, because Faye's thoughts were running on the same wavelength.

The patch of sun in the room moved from the floor to the wall, lengthening, turning a rusty orange. Eventually that disappeared, and Faye still sat. A different nurse than the one before came in at one point to usher her out, saying that she could come back tomorrow in a soothing, motherly voice. That too was funny, because tomorrow, if she wanted to visit Spike Speigel of Hospital Room 798, infamous Bounty Hunter or the Bebop Crew, she would have to consult with the morgue.

"Sleep tight, lunkhead," she called back at the slowly shrinking hospital.

---

"You want anything?"

His gruff voice pulled her out of her television induced haze, and she looked up at him through wet bangs. She raised an eyebrow at the honey colored liquid in the glass he was holding, making him grin and take a seat in the armchair across from her, as she was stretched out upon the couch.

"Some of this, maybe?" He gestured to the glass.

"Eh," she replied, grimacing and turned her attention back to the screen, folding her arms under her head to prop it up slightly. Strangely, she had a near immunity to alchohol. No matter how much of the stuff she chugged down, it hardly ever fazed her. It looked like he had a glass of whiskey, no doubt from the secret stash of Spike's behind the fridge. Even if the bottle had been full, the whole thing would have barely gotten her started. "I prefer not to drown my troubles in liquor, Jet."

He nodded, and knocked back half the glass in one gulp. She watched him with a detached interest, no longer focusing on the commercials running across the screen perched on the table between them. He drank down the rest fairly easily, disappeared for a few moments and then reentered the room with the bottle in hand. Faye observed him as he poured another glass, and another, and...

"It's too...dull around here now." He spoke with a drunk man's drawl, one Faye knew well, but she did nothing but listen. "He ain't here to...raise hell anymore..."

_"Hell yes, he was nothing but trouble!"_

She vaguely became aware that Jet was speaking again, lending merely half an ear because of boredom. And maybe, just maybe, she was a little lonely. She knew that he reminisced quietly for a while more before she slipped into her own musings. She was reminded of her past, of her long dead family, and her present, of her slowly falling apart family. The cute little kid and the animal had exited stage left on the sitcom she called her life, and now the emotionally constipated asshole was standing half in the stage lights and half out while she was unable to help him to stand back onstage, and she was sitting here listening to her only other co-star ramble drunkenly about days gone by, and....

_"W-what have you done to me...Why am I not dead?"_

No. Not her, she wasn't dead, but Spike was going to be, and she couldn't help her precious comrade out in the slightest. She was useless when it came to problems that physical force couldn't solve. Spike was dying

_(why does everyone around me die?)_

and there was nothing she could do for him. Couldn't offer to hold his hand (not that it was likely he would let her) as he slipped from reality to the dream. Couldn't give him one last puff on a cig. She felt totally useless. All she could do was keep coming back everyday in hopes of meeting his scowling face in her direction for waking him. All she could do...

_"...Why am I not dead?"_

"Spike, he lived through everything, y'know?" Jet again. She nodded minutely.

_"I've given you some of my blood. Now you'll live through anything..."_

Blood.

_"...my blood... now you'll live through anything..."_

Live.

She shot up from the couch, making herself as dizzy as Jet probably was, and pelted down the hall. Throwing open the metal door to the hangar, she swore loudly at the sight of her still damaged ship. Wouldn't be getting anywhere in _that_, she was sure about that little fact. Blindly, she leapt to the next nearest ship, and tore open the cockpit hatch. Shoving herself inside, it wasn't until she had torn through the corrugated metal door leading out of the hangar and was flying through the inky sky that she realized she was flying the Swordfish II. Jet had let her fly it back to the Bebop from where Spike had landed it the day he had left without a look over the shoulder. They figured he wouldn't need it anymore.

Her mind on autopilot, she touched down in front of the automatic glass doors, unconsciously pleased to see them whip open before she had even finished exiting the airship. She stormed into the lobby like hell on wheels, whipping down the hall and to the elevator, hearing the calls of the nurses behind the desk. Hearing the voices getting closer and impatient that the elevator was taking so long to arrive even after she had stabbed the button repeatedly, Faye dodged to the left and into the stairwell. Tearing up the stairs, she was only aware of the steady _thump-thump_ of her shoes against the cold metal of the stairs, and the pounding of her heart against her ribcage.

Moving with easy recognition down the hallway, she jerked to a stop in front of his room, the brass numbers 798 glaring at her in the stark brightness of the lighting above her. The door shoved open under her touch, and she slammed it closed, locking it with the heavy bolt near the top.

_"My blood...You'll live..."_

She _could_ help.

Muffled yelling on the other side of the door. Heavy thumping. Cries for immediate security assistance.

She didn't hear any of it. Only the faint _whoosh_ and _beep-beep-beep_ and _drip-drip_ of the medical equipment that surrounded him like a crowd of adoring fans. _That's right kids, just sit back and relax, 'cause the show's about to begin._

She tasted copper in her mouth, like she had been sucking on pennies. Faintly, she felt the stab of pain in her lower lip where she had been worrying it so badly between her teeth that she had broken skin. Moving to his bedside, she leaned over him, over his forever-sleeping face, seeing a dewdrop of red splash onto his cheek from her lip.

Another crash at the door.

It was now or never.

Sucking hard on her lip, she closed the distance between them and pushed her lips onto his. She parted his lips with her tongue, allowing her blood to enter his mouth. Moving back, she licked her lip, then bit into her thumb hard enough to split the skin there. Quickly, she sucked on the protesting digit, then placed her mouth onto his once more, forcing the metallic tasting liquid into his mouth.

_Come on, swallow, lunkhead, swallow or all this goes down the drain..._

Sitting back onto the edge of the bed, she watched for any signs from him, eyes glued to his throat. There! His Adam's apple bobbed almost unperceivable soft, but she caught it...

It was the most panic-riddled, tense three and a half minutes of her life.

His mouth moved slightly, the tip of his tongue snaking out to catch the blood lingering on his lips.

She leaned forward so that her face was aligned with his. The thumping and shouting on the other side of the door ceased to matter.

_"Look at my eyes, Faye..."_

And as they opened, all she could do was look.

---

A/N: Well, I hope this wasn't a total waste of your time. Be gentle with me, I bleed easy. ==;

So, Faye is thinking about blood...this is the reference to the movie. (All the other quotes are from the final episode) In the film, a man puts his blood into her system so that she can be immune to these crazy nano-machines that are running amok. He says his little "My blood, live now, blah blah" line, and we can all go home happy. So Faye's mad 'cause she can't help out Spike, and this little idea pops into her head. "Hey! I'll give him some of my superman blood!" and performs something akin to an uber blood transfusion thingy...

God, I hope no medical-saavy people have read this. They would have to slap me for my terrible medical abuse...

Thanks again for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop, and have no intention of gaining monetary profit from this story. It's all for the love.

A/N: Well, I'm back. As Adelaide E so put it, I felt like a criminal to leave this as it was. It seemed so...incomplete, I guess. I feel a little better now; there's not so many loose ends. Plus, I didn't want to stop writing dor this fic, because I had so much fun with it. This chapter would have been up sooner - when I read everyone's reviews, ideas began to form, but every time I sat down to write, my mother bustled into the room and demanded I go to bed at once. = =;

I just want to thank everyone who had read and reveiwed (even if you just read and didn't reveiw). The comments put me into the mind that another chapter couldn't hurt. Your encouragement means alot to me. Thanks again, and enjoy!

To Live Again

by Siluial

_"He was owned by various people who he didn't really care for. The cat wasn't afraid to die. Then one day the cat became a stray cat which meant he was free."_

And yet, deep down, he wondered if he would ever truly be free.

She had said: _"It's all a dream."_

To which he had replied:_ "Yeah, just a dream."_

---

He could remember that moment so clearly in his mind, everything vivid and crisp, like a freshly pressed flower yet to dry, the memory, the image, remained, retaining a beauty that he would have never admitted to seeing.

Looking up, and seeing a watery green, not comprehending, mind fuzzy and a bit black around the edges.

Funny. He had thought that hell would be red.

Slowly, his eyes had grown sharper, his sight more reliable, and he recognized that shiny green. And inside, thoughts jumbled about his head, unfinished, overthought, fragmented and whole and utterly confusing. He tasted metal on his

lips, and licked them again, trying to moisten them, drawing that metallic taste further into his mouth. He had tasted that before, oh yes, many many times, he knew that taste like the back of his hand, like living in a place so long that

you could walk about with your eyes closed and in the dark, maneuvering around furniture you could see in your mind's eye and not bumping you shins or stubbing your toes on anything.

He gazed upwards, into the green, then to the paleness that surrounded it, then to the inky purple that was about all of it. And as his mind confirmed what he saw, knowing it from his memory, he felt a keen sense of disappoinment, so sharp that if felt like it was cutting his gut into ribbons and nicking his heart, which he shouldn't have been able to hear beating, pounding loudly in his ears.

Something flitted across his mind quickly, a thread of a memory, a peice of a conversation. Another followed, and another, until his mind was racing with things he was struggled to understand, but he _didn't_ - _couldn't_ - understand, because when one resides on the narrow bridge between life and death as long as he had, the mind slowly prepares to let go of it's memories, and it is nearly impossible to remember everything all at once upon returning from the bridge to the land of the living.

Ther result made him feel like a kid again, still trying to find his place in the universe, among its people and its planets.

_"Everyone - they've all lost their sense of place in the world. Like kites without strings or tails."_

And like those kites, he was drifting through the blue.

---

His ties with the past were gone. Blown away, not by the wind, no, that was too cliche and sentimental. His life had been many things, but it wasn't what you would find in a fluffy romance novel. No, they were blown away with explosions and smoke and fire and bullets and blood. Blown away by his proclaimation of _"bang" _upon those torn and broken stairs, from, it seemed, lifetimes ago, before he had fallen and dreamed and then awoken.

He had blown them away because he didn't want to remember anymore. It had just hurt to damn much, like holding a precious gem, only to find that it was as hot as lava, or picking a rose and being stabbed by the thorns. But mostly because

(_"You told me to forget the past, 'cause it doesn't matter. But you're the one still tied to the past, Spike!"_)

there had been something nagging at the back of his mind

(_There had been tears in her eyes_)

that had sunk its hooked claws into him and wouldn't let go, no matter how hard he tried to shake it off.

And so here he was, alive and whole and well.

He had stretched out onto the couch, arms folded behind his head and one leg crossed over the other, eyes lazily following the circular sweep of the ceiling fan's blades. The VidScreen droned in the background, the small fridge in the corner hummed softly. A lit and crumpled cigarette jutted from his lips, but he had nearly forgotten all about it.

His ties with the past were gone, yes, but why was his mind having so much trouble getting rid of the memories? He couldn't help but see her face, that angel-from-hell devil-from-heaven face ringed by a gold crown. Every time he tried to push the past from his conscious mind, she appeared and the whole thing went amoot.

_"He met a white female cat, and the two of them spent their days together happily. Well, years passed, and the wite cat grew weak and died of old age."_

Julia.

Christ, how he missed her.

She had saved him and condemned him in the same breath. But God, how he had loved her. Spike wasn't known for his romantic qualities (not, at least, among his ship mates), but when he loved, he loved hard. He had gone without her for years, learning to live with her not there, and now that he had seen her again, all the walls of his carefully constructed world had come down about him. Now that she was gone, he wasn't sure if he could live again. Sure, he had lived without her, but he had never lived _without_ her.

(Yes, but:_ "**Why** did you love me?")_

He had never fully appreciated the prescence of others until she had come around, and now he was alone again. And it hurt now. Hadn't she told him that she would be with him until the end? Wasn't this the end, so goddammit, where was she? She was dead and he was not, and he knew that he should not have felty guilty about it, but he did. He was free now, wasn't he, which meant that she was free, too...

Yet he knew that it was just wishful thinking, something generated by a naive hope inside him that he had apparently failed in stamping out years ago. Had she been alive, her inner demons would not have allowed them the same relationship as before. The passage of time had changed her, like wind carves away on a boulder until its shape is nothing like the original. He asked himself repeatedly: which hurt more, the fact that she was dead, or the fact that she had changed and no longer loved him like she had?

Someone was at the door to the room. Had been there a while.

Spike cracked open an eyes and was met with the sight of Faye, dressed in normal clothing for once, leaning on the doorframe. She wasn't looking at him, but at the VidScreen on the table beside him, but he knew that she had been observing

him. He felt a little of the old Spike return, for the moment.

"If you wanted to admire me, Faye, you shoulda asked me to get up and turn in a circle." She ignored him, moving in the room at his comment. She curled up in the armless chair on the other side of the table, picking a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lighting one up.

As they sat, he wondered if he should thank her for what she did or not. He still hadn't sorted out whether or not he was really happy with the whole 'being alive' thing, knowing that when he had gone to finish off the ghosts haunting him, he had gone with every intention of not coming back, and certainly not alive. _"Life's a bitch and then you die"_, right? Guess not.

What to do, what to do?

He could still recall that sense of disappointment he felt upon waking in the hospital so strongly that he felt it. She had seen it in his eyes, and had been unnaturally subdued since. He could get why she had been so affected - she had done something incredibly selfless and he had looked disappointed about it when he should have at least thanked her for saving his life, regardless of if he wanted the aforementioned life or not. Coming back to himself, he felt her staring at him, but only because he was staring at her. Their eyes locked together, and he remembered this from before, only they had been much closer. She had confronted him in the hallway, and he had shown her his eyes. He had awoken in the hospital bed and had seen the wet gleam in hers. He knew that she was probably remembering what he had said to her in the hallway, and his thoughts were confirmed when he saw her eyes switching from staring at his right, then his left eye.

**[Hitotsu no me de asu o mite**

**Hitotsu no me de kinou mistumeteru**

**One side of my eyes see tomorrow**

**And the other one sees yesterday]**

Now her eyes snapped fully onto his, literally 'an eye for an eye', and a small smile perked up the corners of her lips. It was a sweet, honest, relieved kind of smile, and it was very un-Faye like. His mouth opened instantly in question. "What?" The intended gruffness didn't sound as irritated as he had wanted it to.

Faye, still smiling (if not, wider now), replied, "Your eyes have changed." He looked at her, clearly nonplussed. "You told me that one eye sees the past and the other sees the present, the dream and the reality. Your 'past' eye was always so hollow, and your 'present' eye looked haunted because of it. But now, they both look different." She paused, blew some smoke out her nose in thought.

"They look alive."

_"I'm not going there to die...."_

"_You_ look alive."

_"I'm going to find out if I'm really alive."_

Well, there was his answer.

He righted himself on the couch. The few moments it took for him to move stretched into hours.

_"Why did you love me?"_

His feet touched the floor.

_"Let's just go away somewhere. Vanish. Go somewhere where there's no one else. Just the two of us."_

He stood, leaving the warm hollow he had created.

_"It's all a dream."_

His shoes made a shuffling noise as he walked.

_"You told me to forget the past..."_

His hands did not go in his pockets. He did not slouch.

_"Is it for the girl?"_

_"She's dead. There's nothing I can do for her now."_

He was standing before her.

_"Keep going, just drive past it."_

Kneeling. Leaning forward. Long arms coming around her neck and back.

_"There once was a tiger striped cat..."_

His face moved forward until they were cheek to cheek, his nose in her hair and the hand on the back of her neck stroking softly.

_"This cat died a million deaths, revived, and lived a million lives. And he was owned by various people who he didn't really care for. The cat wasn't afraid to die. Then one day the cat became a stray cat, which meant he was free. He met a white female cat and the two of them spent their days together happily. Well, years passed, and the white cat grew weak and died of old age..."_

Slowly, her arms wrapped around his chest, one hand touching the mop of fuzzy green hair that she had always teased him for, but secretly wanted to touch. He gave a little sigh, holding her tighter and muttering four little words that she almost didn't

hear.

_"The tiger striped cat cried a million times and then he died, too. Except this time, he didn't come back to life."_

"I hate that story."

**[Doro no kawa ni sukatta jinsei mo warukuwanai**

**Ichido kiri de owarunara**

**It's not bad, a life in the muddy river**

**It life is once]**

A/N: Well, I think that about wraps things up. I had wanted to make this into two seperate chapters, the first about Spike freeing himself from his past, the second about him coming to grips with Julia's death. But when I began writing, they seemed so unbalanced without one another, so I put them together into one big peice. The only qualms I have with this is my gross comma abuse early on (I am a glutton for the commas), and the fact that I might seem a but too repetitious at times. And maybe I abused the quotes just a little.... (I'm waaay to critical of myself)

Other than that, I am happy. Even with how the ending went. I think that Spike isn't OOC, he's just not inhibited by his past anymore. I think he could be quite the expressive guy if he wasn't hung up over the syndicate and Julia.

All quotes from the final episode, song lyrics from _The Real Folk Blues _and_ See You Space Cowboy_, repsectively.

Again, thanks for reading!


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